New Art Project Unlocks 5 Boroughs: Where’s Your Key to the City?

June 4, 2010

Where’s your key? A tourist probably has it. As part of his new, interactive art project, artist Paul Ramirez Jonas is handing out “Keys to the City” — along with directions to locations across the metropolis that are ready to be “unlocked” — at a kiosk in Times Square. The project started yesterday and will go until June 27.

Participating locations include the Brooklyn Museum, PS 73 in the Bronx, Manhattan’s Bryant Park, Eddie’s Sweet Shop in Queens, and Staten Island’s John Holzka Community Garden, along with 15 others.

What awaits a key-bearer at a site to be unlocked? It has yet to be revealed, and the website is intriguingly ambiguous: “back doors, front gates, community gardens, graveyards, and museums that suggest that the city is a series of spaces that are either locked or unlocked.” Apparently, it only takes mystery and a sense of adventure to get a Manhattanite to take the Staten Island Ferry.

Some people are already on top of the city-wide project, though, and the folks at NYC the Tumblr have been documenting some of the key transactions. Here’s what one looks like:

NYC the Tumblr

Hey, even Bloomberg’s on board! He looks frazzled; he’s probably been searching for the key for some time now.